Radio Days and Irina Mashinski’s “The Room, January 1”

bdralyuk

2 years ago

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A few days before we bid farewell to 2016, my friends and colleagues Sasha Razor and David MacFadyen joined me for a LARB Radio Hour on Soviet New Year’s celebrations. Around the same time, I was given the opportunity to discuss1917 on the RTÉ radio show Arena, hosted by Seán Rocks.

2017 is now with us, and in the spirit of new beginnings, I’d like to share Irina Mashinski’s beautiful poem “The Room, January 1,” which she and I translated together some years ago.

I’ll get it — just a little more and …
I’ll stand on tiptoe in the morning,
and then, come evening, I will reach
the tender fir tree’s ticklish withers,
forget about myself beneath it,
and feel the topmost needle’s touch.

All morning, the accordion’s
complaints were heard, the worrying
over my palm’s unlengthy line.
But toward evening, you are higher
than yourself — look, from the spire:
the tree, the winding road, the moon.

As if you’re on the downward slope of
your own years — so bright and hopeless,
alone, inside a rocking tram.
The view’s the same — and yet it’s altered.
Whom will you tell that you’ve just started,
a new force pulses through your palm?